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Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Island Style Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love chocolate chip cookie dough. Seldom do I make chocolate chip cookies. Primarily because I want to put the dough in a bowl in the microwave until melty and then shovel it in my mouth with a spoon.

There's another issue. I've pretty much always been a chocolate chip cookie failure. The cookies always spread real thin. Or look overcooked. Or look undercooked. In Colorado I also blamed it on the altitude...even when I tried high altitude recipes.

Now that I'm at sea level I don't have that excuse. I've also noticed a trend on the food blogs that I follow and that's of using corn starch to create "soft batch" style cookies. And since labeling myself as a chocolate chip cookie quitter is NOT something I'm willing to do - it was time to try again. I used the base recipe from Averie Cooks for her Chocolate Chip and Chunk Cookies﻿. The recipe (and her blog in general) is awesome. Lots of chocolate is key - you want your friends to say "Are you sure you put enough chocolate chips in these?" I island-styled these by adding coconut and chopped mac nuts as well.

I have now moved from chocolate chip cookie failure to success!

What You Need

3/4 cup of butter/margarine (I used margarine), softened

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 egg

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 12oz bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup of dry roasted macadamia nuts with sea salt, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup shredded, sweetened coconut

What You Do

Combine the flour, starch and soda in a medium bowl and whisk with a fork.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter until fluffy. Keep that fluffy trend going by adding the sugars and beating for 3 minutes (I actually timed myself since I figured my odds of success were greater if I really did follow the recipe). Add in egg and vanilla.

Add in the flour mixture and beat for one more minute. Stir in the chocolate chips, mac nuts and coconut. I think one of the keys to success in Averie's recipe is scooping the cookies and the chilling them for at least 2 hours. It really helped to keep the cookies in a nice dense shape rather than spreading all over the place. I used a small cookie scoop and made 3 dozen cookies (they were about 2 inches wide when baked).

Once your dough has chilled for 2+ hours, preheat oven to 350. Line your baking sheet with a silicone baking mat. I put nine cookies on a pan and baked them for 8 minutes (4 minutes and then rotated the pan for another 4). Let them cool on the cookie sheet for at least 5 minutes and then on a cooling rack until you've either eaten them all or they've actually cooled and you can put them in an airtight container.